There's a Time to Die
by Skyeblux
Summary: Final part of the Time trilogy, as promised - healthy dollop of angst & smut!  The previous two stories in the series finally cause the Doctor to come to a startling realisation.  To understand this fully you should read them, otherwise start at chpt 4!
1. Chapter 1

There's a Time to Die

If he was willing to die for her, why wasn't he willing to live for her? Death seems easier, surrendering his tired, weary body to peaceful, freeing oblivion. How many times in his long, arduous lives had he wished for death? The howling, pitiful screams, scared, scarred and animalian, echoing in the deafening silence of his mind when the cacophony of millions of muddled voices and expression ceased, the blood on his hands that the blessed flowing rivers of Jordan would never wash clean, the soul patched up with duct tape and band aids until it was mostly obliterated and barely recognisable, oh the pain, the emptiness the eternity of cursed longevity.

How many innocent, vibrant hearts had untimely stopped their staccato beat so that his, worn, wounded double percussion, would linger and harmonise with the bleeding carcass of the universe? He'd let this rut of unending existence solidify and metastasize into a labyrinthine root system of what habitually became normality. He insulted their brave sacrifices in the convoluted perception of reality that he himself had nurtured with martyred hands.

Why should his life matter more and yet the universe seemed to deem it so? Was his punishment to die to life and join the reams of the fallen, grateful dead until that last breath, that slowing pulse and cradled head in his lap, was more understood and even envied by him than life itself?

Death had become an old friend. Death he knew how to do. Life evaded him. He recalled words that had caressed his lips many times before and no doubt would again that, 'life is easy. There's almost something to live for'. But for so long he'd be living for death - death's hand maiden and harbinger. Living for life meant that death would become a thing to be feared and his life was punctuated by death. Surely he couldn't handle the hypocrisy of a life lived in perpetual fear for to let in the living, he would have to welcome the dead.

How long could he survive watching life, extolling and protecting it until its meaning and his very reason d'etre became a foreign concept to him? He'd waited hundreds of years, found excuses, judged and sentenced himself as 'unworthy' but now it wasn't only him that he was condemning. It was Rose.

Rose who had made it very clear that she'd chosen him over her life. Rose who had told him that he was the special someone that she wanted to waste her short, human existence knowing and sharing herself with. Rose that told him forever and meant it.

She lived life so fully, so luxuriantly, awe struck and humbled by its beauty and she was right - a woman like her can't just go back to being ordinary with no stupid paper qualifications or friends left to love and remember her, at least not without extinguishing everything that makes her amazing. She was an 'all or nothing' type of light that burnt so brightly and she, with such maturity and selfless bravery, had chosen the 'all' even if it meant enduring the 'nothing' or the 'all' being ripped from her feminine, gentle grasp too soon.

He'd always thought of his companions as temporary and vowed to enjoy their waning enthusiasm while he had the time and the chance but Rose had turned his carefully constructed world on it's head, proving that she was in this 'thing' 'til death. Satellite 5, Downing Street, that wretched impossible planet – no way out, no choice, (Madden's Studio) and she had smiled and taken his hand without regret, no bemoaning the husband she never married or the children she never raised to be little, Jackie Tyler, slapping hellions. She wouldn't become obsessed by her own mortality like so many others and decide that T.A.R.D.I.S. living was just too dangerous and potentially fatal. She believed in this life in a way he thought that no one other than himself could fathom but she did it out of love and compassion and not absolution.

He expected or at least desperately hoped that his companions trusted him, but now he had to trust her promised word and that she wouldn't renege on her promise as soon as he let himself believe it and all the potential that came with it.

If Rose Tyler was going to live her brief, brilliant life with him, if he was the best she was going to get, then he better bloody step up and deserve her. He wanted her life to be fantastic, wanted her happiness, to give her everything that she had throw away but giving her that life meant that he, the last of the Time Lords, the Oncoming Storm and Destroyer of Worlds would too have to live, because that would make his foolish, impetuous human, happy. And so he would be rewarded by another startling human sacrifice. Rose Tyler deserved to be loved and he was the only one around to love her. Finally he was given a noble and wonderful excuse to live and love.

No second chances, he was that sort of a man, but for Rose he'd give myself the benefit of the doubt and a second chance to reconnect to what he'd lost and the universe he'd vowed to defend.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 1

T_here was blood, 'they say blood will have blood', so much blood. So much for viewing life through rose-tinted glasses; her vision was blurred and smeared with deep, swelling crimson, her tongue sluggish and furred in an acrid, irony tang, her cheeks damp with life giving, ruby tears as her soul was rent apart and her body pulled and compressed in quaking breaths of emotional exhaustion. _

_She tilted her head to the side, like a curious magpie spying something with a silvery shine and knelt on the stained floor by a crumpled, pale body. 'Hush little baby, don't say a word. Mamma's going to buy you a mocking bird…' A blue-tit fluttered in from a nearby window, though outside the curtains, was the gaping maw of a glutinous, black hole. It held a lilac foxglove in its beak and chirped around the mouthful._

_She accepted the gift, smiling and traced its petals along the plump, blue lip of the man before her. With wide eyed curiosity she huffed closer to his still, slack face and methodically traced every freckle and latent line where muscle once tensed. He was hers now. She could look her fill. Imagine anything, reality would never encroach again. _

_The blue bird flew graceful over to perch on the lens of an old-fashioned camera and morphed, in an obscuring, grey, viscous cloud, into a Raven. "Never more," it shrilled and she laughed heartily with sugary sweetness. "Mine," she intoned and hummed soothingly as she tousled thick, sleek hair._

_She bent low and blushed, "Do you really think I'm beautiful?" She lifted his right limp hand and smoothed it down her cheek, turning her nose into his palm and kissing the blanched, whorled fingertips._

"_I love you too, Doctor," she grinned unabashedly and trailed his puppeted appendage down her neck, over the creamy, olive skin of her slender shoulder and around the curve of a breast. She laced her fingers through his and squeezed his frustratingly unresponsive digits closed, lifting and massaging the ample flesh. She moaned watery and wantonly. "Tit for tat," she giggled playfully slapping the hand away that plummeted under the force of gravity, like the dead weight it was, as she leaned over and began to run her restless hands down his chest and between his legs._

"_Do you want to live forever?" a man in a stained, white shirt and braces breamed giddily down at her from behind the camera. The raven squawked. "You'd never have to leave his side? You'd always remember him?" the man encouraged, seemingly thrilled with his deduction._

"_Really?" she beamed. _

_The raven shifted again into a dense, black shadow that loomed over the cowering trio in magnitude and strength. "There is a season for all things," it boomed. The man started to wail mournful and she turned to see him cradling a deformed baby, bloody and marred with remnants of mortal flesh, still and silent in his arms._

_Suddenly she felt sick, the room began to spin, her heart, no hearts, hammered in her chest and the air tasted like dust and quenched her lungs with nothing but ash that seemed to reignite, burning like a returning phoenix. "I don't want to live without him. He's everything," she coughed and retched as something ripped and shredded her throat, forcing its way out from within. _

_A purple flower, a foxglove, stemmed from her larynx, filling her mouth with plush, velvet leaves as the sickly sweet flavour of asphyxiation trickled like water into her lungs. _

"_And if that mocking bird don't sing, Daddy's going to buy you a diamond ring…" the man cackled dementedly from behind, rocking back and forth on the grimy, creaky floorboards, babe still at breast and she tried to scream, she tried so hard but no sound would come..._

The Doctor approached his companion's door as if it held all the secrets of the universe in its gnarled, synthetic wood. It was a portal of trepidation and exhilaration. For an accustomed adrenalin junkie whose glands had long since desensitised and hardened, the fluttering fever in his veins was new and delightfully thrilling.

The Doctor had crumpled himself up into the corner of the old, thread bared sofa in the second library and poured over forgotten copies of 'Mills and Boone' with psychological curiosity and gentlemanly disgust. In the end, though he could insinuate himself into any time and space, contemporary in their environs, he decided that the antiquated values and courtship of his first formative centuries felt more comfortable even in this fashionable, geek chic skin.

He favoured the simplicity and double entendre of the single, pink rose in his hand though knew that the gesture was so shockingly unlike him that it would jar in absurdity with any notion of subtlety.

His magnificent T.A.R.D.I.S. seemed to hold her breath with him as they coalesced their attention on the large, opaque door. Every thought, memory and scheme shuttered to silence in watchful reverence and anticipation in his mind's eye. Perhaps this acuteness was what nudged his senses to the soft, ragged breaths from within. His superior hearing discerned the textured squeak of hands grabbing at silken sheets, the stampeding heart rate, mournful sobs and the traction of slick, sweaty skin tossing to and fro in earnest. His throat suddenly felt constricted and dry and he swallowed painfully as he gently levered the door open, peering inside with darting, concern filled eyes.

The room was dark but not pitch as the T.A.R.D.I.S. was assisting by casting a soothing, amber glow from her coral walls but Rose's anguished face was as heartbreaking as he imagined. Her mewling cries grew in volume and frequency as he quickly crept to her side, never moving his gaze from the damp, furrowed brow and pert, pained mouth.

"Rose?" he whispered as he soothed a hand across her forehead and into her clinging, moist hair. He softly and efficiently checked for any injury. Nothing but drenched bed sheets and a writhing, whimpering Rose.

"Rose, sweetheart?" he shook carefully at her shoulder.

"Doctor?" the word was wrenched from her throat with such pitiful agony.

"Shush, Rose, I'm here. Wake up."

Her eyelids fluttered, opening slightly and she drew her legs up to her chest hugging them desperately.

"You're gone and…and…I never told you…I never said…"

"No, Rose I'm right here. It's only a nightmare. Please open your eyes," he pleaded, hating seeing this amazing women look so vulnerable and childlike in her long, cotton nightdress.

"Don't want to," she half shouted. "Don't want to see…don't want it to be real…I can't…" she started crying properly now and the Doctor gave up all restraint. He drew back the covers and curled around her foetal form, letting her feel his weight, his warmth and protection. He let his tense body mould into her as he breathed her in and unexpectedly felt tears form in his own eyes.

"Please, Rose. I need you. Come on back to me."

She stilled suddenly and shakily traced a hand down his arm to his fingers that held her around her waist with loving pressure.

"Doctor?" she turned abruptly onto her back, the Doctor moving quickly out of her way, and questioned him with wide, teared streaked eyes.

"I'm here. You were having a nightmare," his intense eyes bored into hers and his voice was soft and caring.

Rose seemed to shake herself fully to awareness at the realisation that she was being observed.

"Oh, gross! The bed's soaked. I'm sorry, didn't mean to wake you. It was silly, irrational…the raven and the way I was touching…I should…hmmm…shower and change the sheets," she was standing already, if unsteadily, on her feet and bumfling up bed clothes and padding around her room in bare feeted distraction.

He rose and took her hand stilling her, "That can wait. Are you ok?"

She thought he looked beautiful in the diffused light, like something not entirely of this realm and maybe, she supposed, he was.

"Yeah," she coughed and in a second the Doctor had her sitting on the edge of the bed with a mug of water.

"Sorry bout this," she muttered through sips.

"Don't be silly." The Doctor was rubbing her back in calming motions and she felt so young and embarrassed but blissfully safe and cared for. She smirked at the thought of the Doctor, domestically 'Mother Henning' her.

He put his arm around her and leaned in to place a chaste kiss on her cheek but continued to rest his head against hers. Rose began to shiver involuntary as the clinging cotton cooled against her flushed skin.

"Sorry."

"Stop that," he playfully chided and pulled a fragranced, fresh pair of pyjamas from her drawer.

"Here. Go splash some water on your face and put these on, eh?"

Numbly Rose shuffled into the bathroom, emerging looking fresher and more content a few minutes later.

He simply took her hand then and led her out of the room, down two corridors, around the fountain and across the hall.

He opened the door to his bedroom and guided her inside, "Sleep here tonight."

"Where will you sleep?" she asked in a quiet, uncertain voice, feeling stupid at the assumption that he would sleep at all and at the timidity of her question. She hated feeling vulnerable but that dream had been so vivid, the images still warred for dominance in her mind, and had left her reeling with confusion and anxious fear.

"Right here," he said, "If that's ok with you?"

Staring dumbly at the familiar spiky haired alien before her, Rose finally managed to nod her head.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The Doctor threw soft, warm smiles in her direction as he busied himself picking up clutter and shifting the half finished, was that her hair dryer?, off the bed. He finally turned back the sheets and motioned to Rose, like an eager puppy, to give up the spot she seemed stoically stuck to, by the door.

She felt uncertain and a little defensive, his strange behaviour unsettling like the moments of scuffling around dark corridors preceding being discovered by angry looking tripeds with bug eyes and blasters. Trap or, knowing the Doctor, more like some clueless cultural disparity or psychological experiment? Was she this paranoid before running for her life became common place? She realised suddenly that she was more so back then. She'd been hurt, 'once bitten, twice shy', by boyfriends and false friends and she'd actually let most of that insecurity go because the Doctor wasn't like other men, he wasn't human and didn't play the same games and she could relax and trust him knowing that he'd never knowingly hurt or take advantage of her.

"No chocolates on the pillow?" she quipped. "Will have to complain to room service."

He looked confused and then smiled that outrageous smile of his before breaking into laughter. It wasn't THAT funny.

"What?" he sobered at her sudden, stricken face.

"What's wrong? What aren't you telling me?"

What did it say about her that she willingly jumped to threats and destruction and handled it easier than a quiet, awkward moment in the Doctor's bedroom?

"Nothing...er…nothing's wrong," he raised his hands to placate the fast approaching Tyler.

"Why you acting weird?" she crossed her arms over her chest and gave him her best, 'I'm not buying it' stare.

"Am I?" he backed away, pulling on an earlobe.

Oh God, this was bad. She could tell. Whatever it was, it was really bad.

"You don't have a death wish, do you?" he queried suddenly scrutinising her.

Avoidance, sudden shift in conversation and mood, Rose sighed inwardly and braced herself for an Armageddon.

"What?" she decided on not throttling him just yet.

"Back at Madden's. He pointed a loaded gun at you and you said, 'Whatever'?"

"No, I don't have a death wish. I have a life wish and the whole chances of living tend to increase when I'm close to you."

"So do the chances of dying," he countered dryly.

"I know the risks," she paused abruptly, her thumb's fingernail flying to her teeth.

"You trying to reverse psychologise me into leaving. The whole 'it's not you, it's me, speech? 'I'm not safe' and all that jazz 'cause I'm not biting."

"Well you are," Rose released her unconscious tell and stopped. "Rather adorably, actually."

"What?" she sounded frustrated and confused and began pacing, never a good body language sign. "What are you trying to tell me?"

"How long will you stay with me?" the Doctor shuffled his feet and avoided the sharp point of her raised eyebrow.

"Forever," she huffed out in exasperation.

He chuckled mirthlessly, "Really Rose, don't you think that's a rather naïve and childish reply?"

"Childish now? I'm sure you were nerdy brain scientist at my age, dropping pencils to look up girl's skirts 'cause you were too much of a bookworm to ever get a date. I'm sorry I'm just a stupid ape but that's my answer, always will be," definite anger now, laced with the first hints of hurt.

"We didn't use pencils and you'd stay even if I think you're stupid and childish?" he quipped.

"Yes," she shrieked then acquiesced. "No? Maybe? Do you?"

He smiled then. "Why do you want to stay with me?"

Rose slumped into a waiting armchair only to jump up and discard the hedgehog looking apparatus as the Doctor grimaced in apology.

"'Cause we make a difference, yeah? It's not just the discovery and adventure and seeing things that I never just to believe were remotely possible. We help?"

"Not always. Sometimes we can't."

"Yeah but we try. That's worth something, yeah?"

"Playing at being a hero, Rose? You'll find heroes tend to be miserable and lonely and burdened with responsibility. What do you have to prove? Why fight so hard? You could make a difference on Earth surrounded by friends, family and lovers who support you. Human's are a social race and you, Rose Tyler, are more social than most. Talk a hind leg of a Perulak, you could and that's difficult as they only have one leg to begin with and tend to be quite attached to it."

"You like to think of yourself as a hero then? You've got the brooding thing and swishing trench coat down to an art?" she scoffed, hiding her bewilderment at how the conversation got so far away from her and feeling around for the paddle to steer them back.

"I'm no hero," he contemptibly spat out, like the word tasted of last weeks curry that you forgot was under the bed. "More like a pawn on a chess board or a paid mercenary for justice though I sometimes have to woe her with cruelty and violence. Why stay with me?"

"I told you…"

"Not good enough. Incomplete answer, deduct half marks."

"Because I'm somebody with you."

"Ah so you're using me for your own self-esteem?"

"That's not fair. I meant that as a compliment. You made me better."

"I made you into a suicidal martyr with Daddy issues and turned you into a weapon to advance my own view of the universe."

Rose blanched at that, biting back a sob and failing miserably. She was shaking and overwhelmed, cast adrift on a mental barrage balloon.

She straightened, lengthening her spine, her voice dropping to dangerous, serpentine tones, "You're not my father and I won't let you take away every experience I've had with you because you think you tricked me into it with promises of ice planets and pink moons and...and…the birth of whole galaxies in seconds. Everything I have done has been my choice, my responsibly, my glory and my shame. Don't take every single memory I have of you and turn it into a lie," she pleaded, tears falling freely, retracing tracks that had so recently dried.

"But it was a lie."

"No!" she shrieked and ran at him, hammering clenched fists into his solid chest.

"Don't you dare!"

When had he tuned into his self-destructive channel? When had he chosen goading her to leave over her actually staying, really staying, with him, forever. Did he hate himself that much? Yes. Could he be that selfless when it came to Rose? No. NO he couldn't, and he knew why, had always known really but ran from it like the coat on his very back.

She sank to the floor at his feet, her restrained arms hanging limp now in his hands. He ran the pads of his fingers over her knuckles and crouched down beside her, fingering a belligerent strand of hair behind her ear.

"It was a lie. I'm an old, old man. I have lived so long. I'm broken, Rose but you think of me as a hero," he laughed, expression heavy and grave. "I'm more intelligent than you will ever know. You don't even have the intellect to grasp the extent of my intellect. I have a frankly fabulous ship that travels in both Space and Time and I can offer you the world and so much more, every star, every beautiful and unique planet, a kaleidoscope of light and life so far beyond your imagination. Oh course, you'd be impressed, bewitched even. I'm quite a catch." Rose wept afresh forestalling where she assumed this conversation was headed.

"It was wrong of me to lie to you, to take your amazement and awe and take advantage of it. To get you to believe in me and trust me because I have hidden my true self from the universe for so long. Rose, Gallifrey, my home, burned at my own hands. I have massacred millions because sometimes the alternative is slightly less murderous, slightly better. I make choices that sentence innocent people to life or death every day. No matter my intentions, a man that has seen and done what I have can never be a good man. And I hide from you the biggest lie of al because it is so repulsive amid all this truth but I can't any more. If you choose to stay with me you have to know everything. You have to know…"

Rose was a weeping shell shocked wreck in his arms. He didn't even know if she was even still processing what he was saying to her.

"You have to know that I'm in love with you." He went rigidly silent and hung his tired, ancient eyes in shame.

"What?" she hiccupped.

"I know. Ludicrous isn't it? That you could ever even begin to feel anything other than pity of such a damaged…that's why I went with the lie of awe and wonder. It's easier to bear than your pity."

Rose swiped at her wet cheeks and placed a dripping hand under his chin. When she raised his eyes to hers they were fathomless, so pained, so aware of a thousand years of sometimes horrific life and they were shining and stinging with tears that he just couldn't hide or control any longer.

"I don't pity you," she began gently. "How could I ever pity someone so strong and brave? Who fights so hard even when he's certain the universe wants him to lose. You can't pity someone who is more than you can ever hope to be."

"Oh Rose, you are so much more than you know," he beseeched her with pleading eyes.

"I don't just travel with you because I'm somebody with you but because I feel like somebody to you. If I'm trying to prove anything it's to prove that I'm good enough to be here with you, that you made the right choice. I don't ever want to disappoint you or make you regret that you asked me into your life."

"No matter what you do, you never could," a wistful, sad smile graced his lips.

"I know who you are. I may never know your hundreds of years of history but I see your pain when you come across people who are oppressed and struggling, your compassion when you look on worlds that have torn themselves apart and instead of just giving up on them, you help and hope that they will change and learn. Your love and passion for life and beauty and discovery is so tangible, it's like it fizzles in the air around you like some invisible current that you can't help but be sucked into. Your respect and morality when you risk your life for even one other lost soul. You give anyone worth and importance no matter whether they're a stupid ape or a genius scientist. You give all of yourself, don't protect anything or hold anything back; every situation has your 100% attention and commitment. You don't do anything by halves.

But it's not just great deeds that makes somebody love someone. It's the little things. The way you hum show tunes absentmindedly while you're frittering about underneath the console, the way you hold my hand gently, as if it's something precious even when we're running for our lives. You're so attentive and make me feel like the only other person in existence. The way you get so enthusiastic about the smallest of things and your whole face lights up and the mile-a-minute babble reflex takes over," she smiled, tongue in cheek, and challenged him to disagree.

"I've loved you for a very long time but I released that I would be lucky and happy even just to be near you."

Such a complex myriad of emotion flickered through the Doctor's expressive eyes, running from shock, to awe, to amusement, confusion, hope, excitement but always hidden beneath, was love.

"I've been childish. Hiding from the boogie man in the dark and hoping he'd go away. Thinking that when I lose you it will somehow hurt less if I never admit to myself that I love you when in reality it will hurt more knowing you never knew. I may look like a human but I think, feel and live a long, long life, like a Time Lord. My time with you will be so short and I'm so scared."

His voice broke and fresh tears welled up in his eyes as Rose pulled him to her, his head smothered in her lap and her loving hands caressing his dishevelled hair.

"But your worth it," he suddenly looked up. "And you either have to leave, I go crazy trying to deny how you make me feel or I do everything in my power to show you how amazing and wonderful you are and spend the rest of your life making you feel happy and so loved, 'cause I'm too tired to fight this anymore."

"Well I'm not going anywhere."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," looking at the lost boy so vulnerable and exposed in her arms Rose could only think of one course of action so she kissed him, wet and breathy with joined tears and heavy, constricted lungs and warm lips, already reddened from biting and worrying.

To be Continued…


	4. Chapter 4

The initial shock value on the Doctor's wide eyed, expressive face was priceless but, never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, (ok, definitely one to look a female gift horse in the mouth and start psycho-analysing and depreciating any and all affectionate gestures – no psychograph? Check! World Ending? Well probably, somewhere somewhen. Clarity of intention? Very, very clear), it was only 0.37 nano-seconds before the disagreeable parting distance was closed by a very happy Doctor.

This kiss could only be described as intense and long overdue. His soft, smooth lips pressed firmly against her moist pout and opened in a gasp of pleasure and sensory overload. He ran an incessant litany of kisses across every inch of Rose Tyler's lips before gently sucking said lips closed and pressing their heads together, holding for breathless moments as both drew cooling air through their noses and refused to part their intimate lock.

He found he could think much more singularly with his mouth clasped tenderly to Rose. Mesmerised, slender fingers raked contently through his luscious hair, sending shivers though his slender frame as he rubbed hypnotically at the hidden warmth of her neck under a blanket of blonde curls, and still neither moved. Moist air collected and condensed between the 'v' shaped grooves of their wanton lips but the inhalations were sharp and incomplete like both felt as if they should be holding their breath but didn't want to ruin the moment by going blue and bug eyed.

As time reset around the couple, they reluctantly drew apart. The Doctor's palm reached to sooth the flushed, warm skin of his companion's cheek and he fluttered his eyes open to see her smiling in awe and nuzzling into his touch.

"Was that ok?" he asked nervously.

"More than. But I think we can do better than 'ok'?" the words mingled on a breathy exhale.

This time all hesitancy was gone or at least muted somewhere deep down in the intestines or stomach, which was fluttering and coiling deliciously. She cupped his strong jaw and leaned in with tilted alacrity, their months tense and firm and as unyielding as their combined bravery. The Doctor wrapped his elbow right round her neck, sealing her securely and possessively like a last kiss that death or misfortune would rent asunder but with the heady promise of beginning, not endings.

Tongues touched with electricity and Rose marvelled at how he tasted, like the moist earth after a thunder storm, static and untempered, wild yet merciful. Their strokes were sure yet slow, each swipe at the veined underbelly like bellows to a fire. Blonde hair was gripped taut and tousled as bodies writhed to gain better purchase and feathering wings of lashes tickled her cheek while a low moan filled her mouth.

When they parted he was shaking and looking at her like some nomadic, tunnel dweller, endlessly circling labyrinthine corridors, always lost and scrabbling in the dark and she was the rising dawn. He chuckled breathlessly at the shared drama in their eyes and the barest hint of confusion and shock that both were awake and their surroundings were still in place and not blown into smithereens by some catastrophic force. Rose smiled so sublimely and reached for him in relief.

He rose then, sure and steady and held out that familiar, beloved hand, waggling his fingers in an unspoken gesture of communion, time and history, an invitation to a new adventure, a new beginning from the man that didn't do endings, a man who was calm and chaos, was barely restrained energy and serene peace. He was a man so obsessed with the final page of the unwritten book that he constantly ran from it, never wanting to stop reading and learning, an ancient and endless story but Rose knew in that instant, in that accepting yet defiant smile that he had peeked the finished prose and was ready for his happy ending even in spite of the dooming and wrenching epilogue that would surely follow.

'_You wither and die…curse of the Time Lord's'- _ a man who experienced so much and burnt like the sun, all around him blinded in his orbit and yet would never have enough, not enough life, not enough time and still too much.

Silly flawed human who lived in the now and laughed at the near to come because she didn't have the burden of years nor a journey to pace over centuries. She'd walk this path and be his hand to hold and somehow, somewhen, she vowed to give him a forever he deserved.

With awe and wonder, so often associated with the Doctor, she now trembled in the face of the man in feelings born out of humanity and love and not of tremendous sights that shook up and realigned her every particle of being, with the fear and beauty of the timeless, alien universe. This exploration and discovery, so much more worthy and humbling.

She allowed herself to wallow in the gravity of the moment and thought it only honourable to do so as she slipped a young, fragile hand into the smooth warmth of his palm, fingers interlocking in an action of security, the much needed and reassuring constant in her life.

Without words, although the jumping vein in his rigid jaw showed the effort of silence for the inner babbling buffoon who turned so instinctually to words for solace in moments of intimacy and awkward realisations, he lead to her to the edge of the plush, midnight blue, bathed mattress and set her down.

He undressed her with such slow reverence, straining to keep his hands on the fabric with which he worked though occasionally a knuckle or fingertip would graze her heated skin and elicited a sharp breath from both. She raised her hips without hesitancy nor command and felt her cheeks touch the silken, gentle material below her. There was something so erotic about removing this last boundary and allowing actual flesh to press into something so completely belonging to the Doctor, something that represented the natural, honest state of man that was reached in privacy and slumber. She shivered from the contrast of temperature between her goosepimply skin and the surging heat at her core that caused her heart to race and pressure build.

He stood there surveying her with such a look of fond appreciation and the default gleam of Doctorish curiosity. She felt herself blush then redden further and farther as she realised he could trace her pinkening skin much lower than even a plunging neckline. She didn't know why she was embarrassed under his scrutiny because she didn't really feel it, just the psychological habit of an involuntary reaction under such a circumstance. She already knew that he knew her more completely than anyone she'd ever known and that he wasn't exactly like other men. A man who could change his face and attire, which apparently was sometimes completely egregious and a hideous insult to fashion, was surely not phased by aesthetics though she did find herself wondering when was the last time that a naked woman was so exposed before him. Did she look alien to him, would he to her? What other bodies and 'brands' was he accustomed to seeing or unlike the men from her home world did he not really see a body as anything but an anatomical study except in situations like these? She hoped this was a different situation and he wasn't medically and scientifically cataloguing her.

But then he smiled that mega watt grin and breathed out an exhale that probably neither realised he'd been holding, the word 'Beautiful' on his breath.

Rose squirmed a little and bit her lip, her eyes falling from his and an errant lock of hair falling to partially veil herself from him.

Then he stepped away and she looked up sharply, feeling more like a distant object on display and fearing what his reticence meant in her current state of vulnerability. To her surprise and relief he began to undress, not making a show of it nor hurrying it, just the normal routine of discarding one's clothes.

He tossed his jacket over the chair in a habitual move that seemed to Rose quite cavalier and had her smirking. Next his tie, though he stuttered slightly as he noticed this accessory produced a lick of the lips and he quirked an eyebrow at her.

"What? I like your ties. They're classy yet demonstrative, very anti-establishment, even in a suit!" She blushed, thinking about the many fantasies that revolved under said ties, especially the blue spangled one; maybe she'd voice them later.

The soft clap, as he tugged his tie free and it bit the air, made Rose whimper and he chuckled, his expression becoming more unmasked and comfortable.

He quickly released a few buttons and lifted both shirt and t-shirt over his head, tousling his hair at ridiculous angles by the motion. He paused, arms still buried in his clothing by his front though now showing an expanse of shoulder and chest and Rose could resist no longer approaching him in haste and gripping a handful of material to bind his captured limbs in place as she kissed and sucked at his defined neck. He groaned in surprise and clear arousal above her, trying to wriggle out of his shirts to touch her but to no available as Rose trapped him with her body.

She continued her progress dipping her tongue into the hallow of his collarbone, lavishing it gratuitously before nipping and sucking at the worried flesh. "Rose…" tumbled out brokenly as he bucked sharply against her, elucidating a wanton moan from her as she finally felt his hardness rub firmly, almost painfully, against her pelvic bone.

All restraint was now shattered as a forceful hand ripped the shirts from his arms, the buttons of the wrists pinging off some random piece of machine in joyous abandon at their new found freedom.

In a 'ha!' of triumph the Doctor immediately attacked her mouth, the momentum ushering her backwards until they fell in an unceremonious heap on the bared bed. Their teeth clashed together on impact and both paused to laugh at their eager desire. Rose thought fleetingly, about a dozen or so teenage, rom-coms she'd squealed over with her mum, laughing at the characters uncoordinated and rushed displays of puberty and was stuck dumb that this centuries old alien was making her feel like a school girl but, of course, without the awkward ignorance and peer pressure.

It felt like her first time and absently she realised happily, it was, in a way; the first time she had ever done this with somebody she felt this strongly and devoted to and yet so comfortable and unashamed with.

Travelling with the Doctor, there had been so many firsts. The sights and experiences with him were so beyond her scale of possible that they were shooting off into the stratosphere and therefore as composed, flirty and confident as she wanted to appear, her reactions were always so naked and true, so herself that for the first time in her life she was forced to embrace truly feeling and being herself without any pretence. It was disconcerting at first but now lying limp under the solid and slightly sharp body the Doctor, it felt freeing.

He propped himself up on his elbows and beamed down at her, the laughter crinkles around his eyes, showing so much life and character.

"Am I crushing you?"

"Nah! You couldn't crush a Sontaran!" she giggled and he, with feline speed, poked her in the ribs before pinning her arms, somehow coming unstuck, upside her head and leaning in close with a devilish twinkle in his eye, "Is that right? 'Cause I plan to knock the breath out of you!" She shuddered at his husky words, so far from the teasing banter they normal share, and the accompanying thrust of his hips to her sex, whimpering at his strong, demanding hold on her.

Reflexively the Doctor backed off looking a little abashed and concerned but Rose immediately looped her arms round his neck and pulled him back down unto her hard, his breath tickling and caressing the tiny hairs on her neck.

"No. I like the feeling of you on top of me. Your power, so subtle yet compelling," it was his turn to whimper helplessly by her ear and she fought back a smug grin.

"Oh Rose," the feel of his body was delicious, suddenly flesh to flesh after so long and the rasping wool of his trousers provided such amazing friction that she found herself grinding into him unconsciously as their breathing lost all structure and plan, in a series of heavy, panted moans. Oh God, he sounded so desperate, almost pained as they rocked and bucked fiercely in an ancient dance and game of dominance.

Rose was the first to yield, bracing her hands on hips and urging him to raise them. She slipped her hand between them, unfastening the cumbersome buttons and zips without sight, caught paralysed as she was in his longing and heated stare.

The Doctor let out a strangling cry, bearing his teeth and arching like a cobra above her as her deft hands parted his flies and grabbed hold of him firmly, her need and passion, overwhelming curiosity and the delicacy of gentle fluttered strokes.

"Oh God," his whole body was tense and prised. "Rose," he grunted. "Please…it's…it's too much. Haven't been touched in…so long…so sensitive."

She blanched in horror taking in the prominent veins throbbing on his neck and the shake of his muscles levering his body. She quickly soothed him with reassurances as she carefully moved him to a more comfortable position on his back, his hand in hers as she knelt by his side hovering over him, waiting while his strained breathes started to abate.

He craned his neck up to look at her, face flushed and eyes ashamed, "I'm sorry. Sorry…I'm letting you down," he whispered and Rose could see his expressive eyes glazing with moisture.

"No. No. Never!" she stroked back his damp and unruly hair. "You really have no idea how beautiful and sexy you are, do you? I mean you really have no clue? You're not just playing coy. You don't realise how every action and gesture is so infused with sexuality. You're such an impossible parody, the most sexual and, at the same time, asexual man I know."

The Doctor looked utterly confused and determined to protest once he got his breathing under control. He marvelled that this human child could see him in such a way, that she defied his posturing charades and ripped such honesty from him, leaving a gapping, terrifying wound that would kill him or resurrect him to someone he'd forgotten he could be - carefree, full of life and the fullness of life not just in part, compartmentalised in his structure and disguise but a whole, overflowing being.

He kicked off his trousers and chucks and pulled her over him like a safety blanket, reluctant to lose the warmth and sensation he'd so recently discovered.

"I'm an alien, Rose," he offered fondly and sadly to her wide loving eyes which she promptly rolled, "Oh my God, really? Like honest to God? You weren't just joking?"

"Oi, I'm trying to say something here and I'm not good and actually saying _something_," he moaned.

"Ok. Sorry. But did anyone ever tell you that it's better to stop talking and start doing?" she quipped, challengingly, hiding a secret smile just for him.

"You don't like talking? Really?" he mused. "Oh hang on, tangent. You're distracting me," he grumbled exasperated and Rose merely shimmied a little above him, adding insult to injury apparently, judging from the outraged look in his eyes.

"I'm an alien, Rose," she bit her lip and nodded. "I'm a Time Lord and I can't help think about time and its toll. But with you I can look passed that. You make me feel like…like a man. Just an ordinary man, holding you, wanting you, loving you."

The incredible and startling reality hit Rose again and she couldn't help but give the soppiest, most genuine and amazed smile, cringing inwardly at how she must look and then telling that part to 'shove off'!

"Ok, maybe talking isn't overrated," and still the smile was firmly in place and in that instant she thought it would never diminish, her jaw would just have to get used to it. She laughed suddenly.

"What?"

"Sorry, just thinking about what my mum always told me as a child," the Doctor grimaced and retched mockingly as if he had a fur-ball at the mention of her mother. She slapped him lightly and the playful, scandalous outrage was back.

"She said, that if I didn't stop pulling faces, that the wind would change and I'd be stuck like that. I'm not felling a breeze but I think she might've been right!" still smiling.

"Well chalk one up to good ol' Jackie. She was bound to get something right eventually," she slapped his toned arm again, giggling. "Oi! I mean statistically speaking…" and she slapped him again. "Oh, stuff statistics!" and he lunged up and captured her mouth in a bruising, searing kiss that had Rose's toes curling.

"And you're right, less talking," his hands stroked down her back and grabbed around her bum, hoisting her forward to meet his hardened flesh. They both gasped, breaking the kiss. "You can talk if you want to. I wouldn't dare try to change you!"

"Oh really," he sneered, rising his lips to her ear and earning a shiver from his moist, hot breath. "Can I talk about how I want to fuck you until you scream? How it's killing me slowing not to be buried inside you, so deep and hard. That I can't even wait long enough to make you beg, though you will next time when I properly explore your heat with my fingers and tongue, devouring you and holding you on the edge of such bliss that you'll go mad before I finally make you cum harder than ever could have imagined in your life."

Rose was a wilting, melting pool of heat and desire, whimpering and rutting against his cock like a starved bitch, beseeching with her eyes and scrabbling hands that were everywhere she could possible reach at once. And it was working; he was coming undone, writhing beneath her and throwing his head back and forth in ecstasy and frustration.

She won as he literally tossed her onto her back and sank into her in one strong thrust. She was more than ready, her juices bleeding down her quivering thighs like a liquid wine of sex.

The shock and elation reflected in matching eyes was palpable and he had to hold still to gain some semblance of restraint and control, pinning Rose's hips to the bed as she helplessly continued to undulate around his sensitive shaft. He shot her a warning look and she nodded but keened in desperation and he almost broke right then and there still so enchanted that this pink and yellow goddess could possibly want him so severely.

Moments pass that felt like hours, gazes locked and breaths were quieted and stressed as if they ere hiding in some darkened alcove, waiting for a group of murdering, marauding despots to pass so they could move and make there escape. Never before had sex felt like life or death but somehow he knew he was going to die long before Rose's short years lapsed if he couldn't hear her make those licentious sounds again or feel her tantalisingly talented muscles contract around him. He felt a gleeful, boyish pride at being complicit in such nefarious and explicit behaviour.

"All clear?" Rose gasped below him, echoing his thoughts. He answered by starting to move as achingly slowly as he could endure, pulling almost all the way out before sliding arduously back in, sighing in pleasure. However the little minx below him was not so patient, clenching her muscles as he drove forward again making her so blissfully tight he swore he saw stars that even he couldn't name.

Her eyes shone with those same indefinable balls of brilliant light as he punished her with a sharp deep thrust that had her arching off the bed and into his arms, clinging on for dear life.

Desperately trying to remember his reasons for deliberateness then shooing the unhelpful notion from his head, he plunged into her willing, wonderful embrace in earnest, begging all the gods throughout the galaxies that he could make this perfect union last.

She was already coming around him, her muscles quaking in exquisite spasms again and again as waves tore through her body like a powerless buoy carried by a storm. Her breath was forced out of her like a physical punch to the gut, her assailant's name deified in a whisper. But he keep going beyond the stars, beyond the pulsing nebulas and spiralling galaxies, beyond the teeming universe and beyond Time itself, hard, rough strokes as gratifying in pain as in pleasure before he felt her coil and burst again and this time he followed her, he would follow her anywhere and this was into the jowls of hell or gates of heaven and both screamed as the impossibility of gravity, physics and existence beyond their bodies and minds disappeared in rapturous oblivion.


	5. Chapter 5

Epilogue

She came round, hair splayed messily over a sweaty chest and her body feeling leaden, like a rag doll, listless but oh so perfectly sated, stretched and throbbing with a dull, beautiful ache that pounded in time to her heart. He held her tenderly, absently stroking a feathering, ticklish path up her arm that was a dead weight about his waist. His nose nuzzled in her hair like a cat seeking attention and comfort and she lulled her head back to look at him.

He was smiling gently but the raw emotion in his eyes was breathtaking. He looked so fragile, need, so stark and deep, swirling in his chocolate irises, the whites of his eyes defiantly trying to smother the insecurity and assumption that she would soon reject him, leave him as if he was waiting at the edge of a cliff knowing he would soon fall into the shredding tempest below. What was worse was the forgiveness that was already there and the unconditional love and gratitude and reassurance that he would never regret his decision no matter how much she'd bruise and break him.

Gazing into that depth and trauma and adoration, her heart clenched and burned in her chest, weeping searing bloody tears and in that moment all worries, questions, thoughts vanished to be replaced by the one mantra that would rule her every second from that moment on: "I WILL LOVE HIM". Nothing would stop Rose Tyler in her quest.

She stroked a stubbled cheek and smiled intimately, "I love you!"

His breathe hitched and he averted his eyes. She pushed her self up on her elbow to chase after them, "I love you," she repeated in a tone that brokered no argument.

The Doctor closed his lids and sighed so she urged his face towards her and whispered onto his lips, "I love you." A single tear leaked from the tiny pool at the corner of his eye. Rose smiled against his cheek as she stopped its trail with a kiss, "I love you." His breaths were becoming ragged, almost panicked though she knew it wasn't the fear of these words but the fear of beginning to let himself believe them that tortured his soul.

"I love you," she wrapped his head in her hands and urged it to rest on her chest, the rest of his body automatically curling around her like a frightened child and she simply held him, rocking him gently and stroking through his hair with loving hands as she repeated this litany over and over and silent, wet, drops spread slowly over her skin.

He clung to her then, so tightly she'd bruise, as moist, hot breaths rushed upon her chest quickly followed by sound, wet kisses. When he couldn't reach any more flesh from his safe cocoon he pushed himself up, red rimmed eyes boring into her skin as his mouth continued to worship and caress every inch as if his lips controlled the rest of his body to move occasionally in necessity to accomplish their movements. Like some guppy sucking its way around a fish tank!

No thought, just action, just need and desperation.

Rose scratched lightly through his hair and tried to distract him with soothing words but in his dazed intent, he truly didn't seem to hear her. His kisses were hungry, like he was trying to suck the juice from the porous flesh of a sharp, citrus fruit, so thirsty, suckling like a newborn without awareness. Her skin was starting to tingle and flush from his intense ministrations and the oxygen left her lungs half in concern and half in dizzying excitement.

He mapped every inch of flesh of her thorax before methodically moving back up to her shoulders and down her arms, nipping and circling and licking at the grooves of her skin down to one wrist, mouthing her pulse with a lingering tongue before attentively bathing each digit in turn like a delicacy of swirling glory. His raised her arm to rest by her face that was gaping in wonder, to continue along the sensitive underside with obvious pleasure and dedication. Rose squealed as the Doctor nuzzled and sucked at her pit, having no idea that such a neglected and embarrassing area could be so responsive and arousing.

He didn't lift his eyes nor pause once as he pounced on her other appendage like a police sniffer dog being lead by its nose and maintained his torturous exploration.

Rose was reeling with sensation but she wanted, needed him to understand that he owed her nothing and that he was all she wanted. She herself was desperate to bring HIM pleasure, to spoil him and savour him and give everything she had to him. But suddenly, as if she'd been hooked on a fisherman's line and tugged violently, she flailed and fumbled at the sheets as every nerve was swimming giddily to the harpooning tongue of that amazing man as he gorged on her sex, burying his face deeply into her folds and straining to reach as far inside of her as he could.

Staring gob-smacked down her body Rose groaned like a feral animal at the most erotic and depraved sight of an uncontrolled and dishevelled Doctor eating her with teeth and tongue like a Neanderthalic man. Oh God, she'd never seen anything as pure, lustful and unashamed as he wrapped his hands around her backside and thrust her hips over and over, hard against his face. How could he even breathe, did he even care?

Sex in her backward little niche of time certainly wasn't tarred so caustically with the brush of depravity, disgust and sin but it was still frowned upon, something that was accepted but kept behind closed doors. Britain had only recently acquiesced enough to allow civil partnerships and these 'heathen' atrocities were still boycotted. It was still associated with lower class teenage mothers with no self-control or gumption to buy contraceptives and still treated as some secret, shameful vice that breed guilt or rubbish self-esteem and earned you a slutty reputation.

Seeing such a powerful and righteous man degrade and humiliate himself with reckless abandon by her society's opinion was such an unbelievable turn on that any cognitive thought melted to a quivering mound of whimpering goo.

Her orgasm rocketed through her taking her so completely by surprise that she screamed and would've leapt forty foot off the bed if her blessed lover didn't have her grounded and attached so intimately to his own being.

For a moment she literally couldn't breathe, her lungs just not filling fast enough, her chest constricting and ramming in protest. She was in his arms in an instant, flinging her head in delirium and basic rudimentary need for something so vital and denied.

"Rose! Rose look at me!" he tried to hold her still, framing her face but not applying enough pressure to hurt her. The protective urge had snapped him out of his trance like a bucket of ice cold water to the head but now she was struggling, incoherently in some blissful spell like the foolish but curious and larger than life human that she was, begging 'Please, sir! Can I have some more' not realising her belly was already stuffed and bulging as she glutted herself on more than she was ready to handle.

The Doctor knew it was entirely his fault and that she would deny him nothing, no matter the personal consequences to herself. He sat her upright, bending her slightly forward and fumbled for a paper bag in the bedside table, funnelling it and pressing it to her mouth as she shook in a cold sweat.

The panic quickly turned into laughing hysteria and exhaustion as she slumped back down gripping him tightly. He looked so concerned that she could only chortle all the more.

"Are you ok, sweetheart?"

Eventually she calmed herself enough to respond, still giggling and fanning her face like a visual memory aid to breathe.

"Wow!" she shook with peels of laughter. "Could have warned me!"

"Sorry, I was impulsive…"

"No, no, no, no, no…" she continued chuckling still half in her own little world.

"You're like the shake and vac of oral! A Dyson roller-ball with added suction!" she whooped.

"Can we do that again please?" He finally smiled that infectious grin.

"Oh, and…" she spluttered, light headed and giddy. "…this bag smells of bananas!"

Now the pair of them were rolling around howling and guffawing to the point of undignified snorts and hiccups. After some time and shared sparkling smiles radiating with pleasure and love they calmed and Rose let out a long, heavy breath turning to face that gorgeous freckled, goofy face of the man that adored her.

"I love you," she stated.

"I know," he replied and pulled her to him enveloping her in a strong embrace that would last while she slept and he napped briefly and then asked himself, like a newly regenerated incarnation, "Who am I? What sort of a man am I? Rude, not ginger, happy and freakishly in love". His smile kissed her hair until she gradually wriggled and stretched from sleep where he was ready and waiting to kiss her awake.

A.N./Thank you all for reading and sharing this series with me!


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